


Echo

by ThePsuedonym



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Canonical Character Death, Car dissection, Character Study, Complete, Daemons, Gen, How do I tag?, Howard Is Not Evil, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, Mild Language, Minor Character(s), POV Alternating, POV Howard Stark, POV Tony Stark, Semi Howard-centric, Semi Tony-centric, Time Skips, Why doesn't Howard have a POV tag?, many minor characters, of sorts, or dæmons, or what have you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-10 18:38:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4402871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePsuedonym/pseuds/ThePsuedonym
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Everything,” Howard heard her say one night, “expected from a Stark is never met. They rise above and beyond to leave their audience awed, while they wonder why no one else seems to understand.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Dual character study.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echo

**Author's Note:**

> Because there aren't enough daemon fics. Because a lot of people hate Howard on principle. Because, with the MCU, we haven't enough information on him to judge his character after the war.
> 
> Not tagged for His Dark Materials because I only snatched the daemon concept from the series and nothing else.
> 
> May undergo revision in the future.

Birth was, in a word, messy.

The thought and active realization took all of five seconds to register itself in Howard’s mind, reclassified as an unimportant observation; birth was very messy and inarticulate, undignified and undefined despite, hell, _in spite_ of the research put into the complexity that was the creation of life. It was everything that engineering wasn’t, Howard thought, and yet they were so similar. Creation came at a cost.

He remained on the fringes of the room, giving the doctor and the nurses the space they needed to tend to his wife, who still lay on the bed, her chest heaving with exhaustion. The area cleared slightly as the doctor took the child away – for the hospital records, Howard guessed – and two nurses took his place, cleaning blood and other unidentifiable juices. A large tabby jumped up onto the bed, treated the pair of women to a baleful look, and settled himself on Maria’s chest, his purring loud enough to wake the dead.

Claws tightened on Howard’s shoulder and he looked to the source: a large osprey, whose brown and white feathers looked out of place, simply surreal in the drab hospital room. It turned a yellow eye onto him and brought its beak close to his ear, voice low enough for only him to hear: “Birthing is messier than I’d expected,” she observed, echoing his own thoughts.

Howard nodded. “It is.”

The nurses left shortly thereafter, allowing the man to approach his wife. The tabby glanced at him before shuffling to the side, allowing the osprey to carefully land beside it, mindful of the woman they were standing on. The bird began carding its beak through the cat’s fur, smoothing it down from the anxious fluff it had lifted into. Maria smiled down at the pair before looking to Howard.

“Quite the pair, aren’t they?” she asked, her voice still carrying that melodic quality that Howard loved despite the painful hours of labor she had suffered through.

“I suppose,” he answered, taking her hand in his, “but what does that say of us?”

Maria smiled. “That we are as ridiculous as they, but no worse off for it.”

When the doctor returned, he handed their child back to Maria. “Twenty inches, seven pounds,” he informed them. An antelope or some similar ungulate lurked in the doorway, watching them all with one dark eye. “On the whole, he seems to be a healthy baby.”

“He needs a name,” Maria mused. She looked to Howard. “Anthony. Anthony Edward.”

“Rolls right off the tongue,” the doctor absently agreed.

 

He didn’t know how Maria could stand it. Intellectually, Howard knew that a familiar, dæmon or what-have-you wouldn’t form for several weeks after birth, and even then the creature was typically small and often unnoticed by the parents. But every time he saw Anthony, he couldn’t help but look for a presence that wasn’t there. Instinct told him that his son was dead for the lack of a companion. Logic told him that he wasn’t old enough to have developed one yet.

Revulsion turned him away every time and he had to fight to keep his reaction toned down to an acceptable level.

Maria, God bless her, somehow ignored the emptiness entirely and took care of the boy with nothing but motherly love in her eyes. She didn’t judge her husband, either, only looked towards him with a smile on her face and their son in her arms.

Howard’s relief was palpable when, nineteen days after Anthony was born, he entered his room and found an oval shell tucked into the boy’s tiny arms. A turtle, then. Or a tortoise. That was… That was good. Anthony was alive.

Reassured, he left, informing Maria of the development as he began packing.

“Leaving so soon?”

“I have to. Summer means the ice is melting, so we’ll have a better chance of finding the Captain.”

She nodded in understanding. “Be back soon, my love.”

“Of course.”

He loved her so much.

It was almost four months before Howard returned; being mid-September, the air had begun to cool from the city’s summer warmth and the air was no longer distorted from heat radiated off the blacktop. Stark Mansion was clear cut against the steely sky, the trees beginning to turn from a healthy green to autumn’s dressy reds and golds.

The winter holidays were no different than the years before, save for an extra nanny that stayed to attend to Anthony when both Howard’s and Maria’s attentions were required elsewhere, and Jarvis was visiting family in England. When the air warmed and the snow melted into spring, Howard began planning the next expedition, leaving on the first of June to maximize the time available to search the ice.

And the years passed in such a manner, until Howard found that he could no longer withstand the cold as he used to.

 

Everything about the boy defied the expectations placed on him. Maria would shake her head with a smile, skillfully placing the blame on the Stark genes. “Everything,” Howard heard her say one night, “expected from a Stark is never met. They rise above and beyond to leave their audience awed, while they wonder why no one else seems to understand.”

It almost sounded practiced, and maybe it was; the first time he heard her say it he had been up north for nearly five months before the ice began encroaching with the coming of winter. Now he was seeing it with his own eyes. The boy had spilled one of his toolboxes, littering the floor with various implements. That one had contained mostly hex keys of various sizes and different types of pliers.

Jarvis – the war veteran Howard had hired to watch over his son; the man needed a quieter life, and the engineer another pair of sharp eyes to watch over the boy – had gently extricated a Mole wrench from his hands and removed Anthony from the scene. And it wasn’t the first time it had happened, either, Edwin told him later, once everything was put back in its place. A second container, mostly metal bits and bobs, nuts and screws and bolts, had been upended before Howard had found him.

On one memorable occasion it had been a box of springs.

(“They were everywhere,” Jarvis had dryly told him, fond exasperation evident despite his tone, and Howard was again reminded why he chose the man above all the others.)

Curiously, however, as Anthony babbled on, as Maria often assured him babies were wont to do, his dæmon remained silent – at least in Howard’s presence. There had been nothing unusual as to her forming, as he could recall. Maria confirmed there were no abnormalities in the days following, but agreed that her behavior was unnerving. Only Anthony seemed unaffected by it, petting her and holding her close no matter what form she was in: usually some small, furry unidentifiable creature, or a variation of black bird.

Nor would she interact with any of the other dæmons.

Even now Jäger was trying to coax her into a game of tag, failing miserably as the now tar-feathered dæmon blankly stared back. They didn't even know her name for all her refusal to communicate. Soon, soon Howard would bring them to a dæmon specialist, once Anthony could articulate clearly. If she was still silent, they would visit a doctor.

He feared the worst, wondering if this was the first sign of illness.

 

For all the horror-inducing stories that Maria would treat him with – and they _were_ terrible; Howard was not a man who understood people intimately – Anthony was little trouble, discounting his unfailing tendency to firmly entangle and thoroughly place himself in everything and anything he should not be in a ten-foot radius of. Especially if the anything in question involved his father’s work.

When he was present, Howard saw that his son did not fuss or whine as other children would. He never cried, threw fits or had tantrums when Jarvis said such behavior was normal. Rather, the boy _adored_ both the Brit and his mother, and often approached his father without any indication or obvious purpose. Howard, despite his confusion, tolerated it; Maria called it bonding.

Jäger laughed in his ear and ignored his questions.

The next time he returned from the Arctic (“Another failure, Maria, but we _must_ be getting close,”) Howard instinctively knew that his workshop had been invaded. Most often the perpetrator was either Jarvis or one of the maids, to return misplaced tools or equipment, or to clean the dust that gathered during Howard’s long absences. He knew now that neither was to blame.

Approaching the tables, he saw that the welding equipment was left spread out on its surface, along with several mesh screens. He kept everything tucked away in a drawer or two or six, never out on display. Not to mention the stink of metal; someone had clearly come in to weld in the relative privacy of the workshop, though who it could have been escaped him.

Jäger, sensing his confusion, chuffed and leapt off his shoulder to land on the next table over. She passed spools of copper wire and various picking tools before dipping her head between a pair of gloves, emerging with a glossy black feather clamped in her beak. Howard took it from her, thoughtfully turning the secondary between his thumb and forefinger.

Then another three years passed, three more years of failures upon failures. Stark Industries grew, but the search continued to bring nothing but dead ends. He knows what he traded for the opportunity, knows what it cost him, but he cannot bring himself to regret it. Everything, Howard knows, would be forgiven if he found success.

(Even if he was dead. So much time has passed that he doesn’t know if that would be worse).

But when he and his dæmon entered the workshop on his first night back in New York from Greenland, he realized just what his loss entailed.

Anthony was then seven years old and far more troublesome than Howard could recall himself being, not that there was much to recall; what years remained of his own childhood were long spotted and stained with the amber of whiskey or the gray of lost time. He did remember playing with the neighborhood children, games that made little sense to him now; he hadn't taken an in interest in engineering until far later.

Now, staring into the guts of his 1969 Mustang Boss 429 – with his son standing shamefaced and unfamiliar to him, Howard felt his age and choices weigh heavily on him. Anthony’s dæmon was hunched into herself, sullenly and silently perched on his son’s shoulder. Fully focusing his attention onto the pair, Howard distantly realized they were near mirror images of each other, an echo of the boy he used to be. Anthony could have been him when he was younger; except, that he wasn’t. Would never be.

How he hoped his son would never be like him, and a better man for it—!

Howard heaved a sigh and shook his head, saw the disappointment on Anthony’s face. He wouldn’t understand, not now, maybe never; he would be better for it.

And yet, Howard feared he was too late.

 

At eight, Obadiah had approached Howard with the suggestion that the redesigned engine be marketed as soon as was possible. Once Anthony and Maria got wind of the proposal, it was out before the end of the month. Nine years old and he was designing circuit boards for simple robots. Ten and he had crawled back into the Boss, improving its suspension and output, in addition to taking apart half of the kitchen’s appliances and putting them back together, leaving them far more efficient than they were before. Throughout the next two years, he dove headfirst into computer coding, testing his discoveries on the simple toys he had designed years earlier to find them more responsive and effective.

There was more, so much more, and now that Howard was here to stay (“You’re not the young man you used to be,” Maria gently told him, and he saw for the first time the gray creeping into his hair, and “Where did the time go, Maria?”) Anthony was leaving. At the tender age of thirteen, he was leaving for his college education.

Whether or not Howard had failed in his own mission, there was no denying that his son was intelligent. He himself had not left for Massachusetts until after he had received his high school diploma at a healthy eighteen-and-a-half years old. And, closing his eyes, he could still recall his final days: the air heavy with summer heat, generous birdsong and the rich fragrance of birch and maple as he said his final goodbyes.

Here and now he was struck with an early autumn chill, the trees standing empty and bare of both life and leaves. Instead of his friends and parents, Maria was gently fussing over their son as he feigned irritation. Matthew, no longer as nimble or glossy as he had once been, carefully twined himself between their legs. On Anthony’s shoulder was his raven dæmon, patiently reassuring Maria that her son would be well looked after.

In his ear Jäger hummed, “Doesn’t seem real, does it? Seeing them leave the nest and staking their claim. So young, too.”

He absently reached up to stroke her feathers, watching Anthony finally pull away from Maria, claiming he would be fine on his own. “Too young.”

Jäger huffed a laugh at him; her feathers brushed against his skin. “Too young?” she echoed. “And when has that ever meant _anything_ to a Stark?”

“Never, I suppose.” Howard caught his son’s gaze but the boy turned away. He heard the raven clicking softly, and he said, “We never live up to anyone’s expectations, you know.”

 

For most of the world, time was measured in days. Years. For Howard, it may well have been measured in achievements. Every time Anthony came to visit, every break heralded new technology, grandoise ideas, yet another thought and mere dreams made reality. Where his only son created life – he was now planning his doctoral thesis, a project that from what Howard could glean could potentially _revolutionize_ the future of robotics – he devised new ways to take it.

Firearms with greater range and less kick. Bombs with twice the radius, half the size and four times the fatalities. Sometimes both, even; an underbarrel primed to launch explosive cartridges, perhaps. Vehicles more aerodynamic than their predecessors, faster, stronger, more durable, more for less wherever and whenever applicable. Explosive and corrosive compounds. Missles.

Anything and everything that could dispense widespread death without harming the user.

This was the legacy he was leaving for his son, one drowned in blood and metal. More and more often Howard found himself wondering what Anthony would do with himself once he had inherited the company. He had not expressed any interest in taking up the stained mantle that his father had so delicately carved over the decades, only continued to build and devise and generally ignore the impending future that was spelled out for him, unless he was blind to it outright. Jäger, of course, was a terrible sound board, deigning only to tell him that what was meant to be would pass.

Howard was never such an idealist; if it was in his power, he would make his goals come true. But there was nothing he could do when he didn’t know _what_ it was he wanted. Who it was he wanted his son to become (not like him, never like him, not when he could still see the destruction he had caused and had never had the courage to stop).

He was no closer to an answer when Anthony presented the world’s first working artificial intelligence to his professors, a simple helper construction consisting of a claw attached to a mobile arm. Nor did he know what to aim for when his son was given his diploma, ebony ink and scarlet seal still fresh and pungent. There was still time to ponder the question, Howard thought. There was no hurry, not yet.

Jäger sighed.

 

He remembered their last words.

Matthew, warning him of the icy roads.

Maria, who had been telling him that she was looking forward to seeing Anthony when they returned to the mansion.

Jäger had no words to speak; she breathed in his ear, everything and nothing passing between them.

There was nothing more to remember.

 

Tony was twenty years old. He was only twenty years old when he received the news.

Jarvis had stayed to watch over the mansion that year; he was not immune to the ravages of time, and even if Master Stark still found himself fit to operate his machinery, Edwin was not as confident in his ability to drive the couple to and from that night’s event. It had come as a pleasant surprise, then, when he found the youngest Stark on the doorstep, a smile on his face and luggage in hand.

They greeted each other warmly as their dæmons became reacquainted. Anne perched herself on Babel’s back, and together they followed the pair further into the mansion. Choosing to decline any food or drink, the four settled themselves in the den and began catching up. The old sheepdog lay down on Jarvis’ feet, huffing and burbling himself into a light doze. Soon enough, the topic turned back to Howard and Maria.

“I’ve never understood why he didn’t like me,” Tony admitted, stroking Anne’s feathers. She had settled rather early, choosing the form of a raven without regret. “I tried to make Dad like me – tried to impress him by building things like he did, but he ignored everything.”

Tony would never have a conversation like this with anyone else. Well, perhaps Anne, but she was a part of him and Jarvis was his confidante. He could be trusted with anything that needed to be said, even if it was nothing at all.

Jarvis chose his words carefully, another thing that Tony had learned to love about the man. He would say what needed to be said without hemming or hawing, a directness that he relished more and more as the years went by, as most of his professors seemed to enjoy taking the scenic route along any conversation.

“Your father does not hate you,” he said. Tony refrained from snorting.

“Only indifferent.”

He shook his head but lost the chance to correct him. Babel’s ears twitched and he picked his head up as the door to the den opened, admitting Obadiah and Jude. The lynx immediately padded over to the canine, sniffing his fur lightly while the aging canid patiently endured her attention. Tony turned to greet the man but his words caught in his throat. That was not the face of a man who bore good news, he knew. But he didn't, not yet.

“What happened.”

Obadiah nodded to Jarvis and looked to Tony. It was no longer a question of _if_ , but _what_ , and he found himself fearing the answer.

“There was a crash on Macdougal and Waverly. I’m sorry, Tony, your parents didn’t make it.”

Tony breathed in and bowed his head. Anne cried. Babel whined and Jarvis soothed him.

Outside, it began to snow.

 

There were two funerals held: an initial, family-and-close-friends only event to allow those most deeply affected by the eldest Starks’ passing to lament in relative privacy, while still observing the social rites regarding the dead; and a second public gathering that Tony only attended for the sake of appearances. He had his own grieving to do, after all and it involved a bottle of Glenfiddich and the workshop. And if he could feel Jarvis’ eyes on him… Well, everyone had their own ways of mourning.

Maybe Howard didn’t like his son. Maybe he did. It didn’t matter anymore, because he was dead and there was no changing that, but he was still his father and Maria his mother and they were gone, gone, _gone_ and they were never coming back.

Jarvis was kind enough to remove his charge from the workshop that night and relocate him to a proper bed. Neither mentioned it the next morning, and for that Tony was grateful.

Two months’ respite and Tony began to relax. Everything was fine. Everything was going to _be_ fine and even if he wasn’t over his parents’ death yet he was managing it somehow. He was getting there, one step at a time, and he wasn’t hitting the bottle every night anymore. It was a slow road but it was certain.

Two months’ respite found that Jarvis was with them. Peaceful, the doctors said; he had fallen asleep one night and never woken up. No one would have noticed a thing, if Babel hadn’t been missing. Gone, like he had never existed.

It only took two hours for Obie to find him lying on the workshop floor, an empty bottle of Dalmore scotch in hand. Anne wasn’t anywhere in sight and Obie had panicked, waking Tony up; she had crashed behind one of the desks, too affected by the heavy drink to fly properly.

Later, once he had recovered from the deep headache the abrupt awakening and hangover had brought him, Tony found it reassuring that someone still cared for him. Then he laughed, because he needed to find the validation by tricking them into thinking he was dead (not that they had done that intentionally; it was more of a coincidence than active malice).

He still thought it was pathetic.

 

Tony was not ashamed to say that he and Rhodey celebrated the latter’s last days before shipping out with drinks. Nor was he shy to admit that night was the first time he had been drunk – legally. If it had been up to Tony they would have gone out in true Stark style, beautiful women everywhere in a passable orgy, because goddamnit he was twenty-one and he was going to act like it!

Tony doesn’t remember most of the nineties, anyways.

 

A bright spot in the haze, a moment of clarity – thirty years old and already a father.

(Jesus Christ, he felt _old_ but so so elated)

Or if he wanted to be technical, which he didn’t, not really, he had been a father since he was seventeen and first brought Dummy online, or Butterfingers shortly thereafter.

But there was something different about JARVIS (Just A Rather Very Intelligent System, for those that asked. No one ever did). Not the lack of a physical body, but that played a part in it. Nor was it that he could directly speak to Tony, could snark back at him in achingly familiar British tones he had accidentally stumbled upon while exploring old hard drives, or that he learned so much faster than his brothers, first crawling, wobbling, then taking off in leaps and bounds.

Maybe it was that he understood: Tony had taught him everything that he knew before unleashing the AI onto the unsuspecting Internet. They had discussed at length the flaws behind HAL, of Skynet and VIKI; the whys and hows of the robots’ revolt in _The Matrix_ ; Asimov’s Laws and the number forty-two; even touched upon Orwell’s Big Brother and the possibility of More’s fabled Utopia. Anne introduced him to Steven Wright and Will Rogers for their unrelenting philosophy and whip-smart wit, Charlie Chaplin and Groucho Marx to impress the benefits of humor and good nature; we stand upon the shoulders of giants, she would say, and Tony never felt prouder.

Or that he could change: his code was written with learning and adaption as his primary objectives, after all. JARVIS was not created to serve any particular function, save, perhaps, the observation of those around him. He formed his own thoughts and opinions, and after reviewing what he had found, had (somehow) found something worthy enough in Tony to write himself a new objective, paramount over those he was originally given: to watch over the man, despite being in Tony’s unbiased opinion, a crappy human being. “Sir” had become a joke between them; “ma’am” nothing but inspiration. Pepper, to JARVIS, was an evolving study; nothing in relation to Tony when she was an accountant in Legal, not worth more than a passing glance; an unconcern after her promotion to personal assistant; a threat when she first held much of his life in her hands; a curiosity when she passed up the chance and told Tony he was being an idiot; a friend when they first met. Rhodey, on the other hand, never faced any scrutiny, spoken of with far too much fondness to be appropriated any. JARVIS, Tony decided, was a better man than he (not that he minded).

Possibly because he was there for Tony: he could be an ass, he could be insensitive and indelicate and a complete bull in a china shop when it came to personal relations, driving people away at worst and leaving them reluctantly searching for more at his absolute best, but JARVIS never second-guessed him. Never questioned him. At least, not when it really mattered. He valued the AI’s opinion, sure, he could always use another person to tell him, “Tony, you’re being an idiot,” but when he needed the support JARVIS was always there. In a better world, everyone would have their own JARVIS, so it was a shame that the world was so terrified of outdated science-fiction, but Tony suspected the AI wouldn’t have it any other way (“Not fond of sharing, are you?” “No, sir. Not when it is your well-being at stake.” “I knew I liked you for a reason.” “Thank you, sir,” and was he always so deadpan?)

(Really, it was because JARVIS was more human than Tony.)

(He was everything Tony wasn’t – couldn’t – would never be.)

(And he was okay with that.)

 

They say that there is a first time for everything. Tony didn’t know about the rest of _everything_ , but he was thirty-eight the first time he died.

If it wasn’t when the bomb hit – and that was a mindfuck in and of itself, thank you; that was literally _his_ tech, _his_ _shrapnel_ in his chest – then it was definitely during what came after. A haze of darkness and lights and glinting steel and drugs and _pain_ – but he didn’t remember the details of it, nothing beyond a muddled mess of _moving Anne behind him as the bomb fell in slow-motion, Stark swoosh_ literally _before his eyes_ and _why the hell is it so cold why is that man shaving in my room where the hell am I?_

The terrorists’ attempts to convince him to work for them did little to improve his mood and general well-being beyond forcing his eyes to attempt to adjust to extreme light then extreme darkness in far too little time. Back in the cave, he sullenly grasped one of the blankets he had thrown earlier and pulled it around himself as well as he could, mindful of the wires poking out of his chest like a failed monster created by Frankenstein himself. The part of his mind connected to Anne was strained, making his head pound on top of all the other shit that had happened in the past however long he had been there.

Ho “just call me” Yinsen had explained what had happened to him, how he had ended up going from riding in the funvee to trapped in a cave with terrorists and wired to a car battery for life support. And surely under other circumstances he surely would have been impressed by the doctor’s ingenuity. Except for the fact that, y’know, he had a _fucking hole in his chest_.

“I would stop doing that, if I were you,” Yinsen advised from the other side of the cave, watching the engineer halfheartedly tugging at the cords that bound him to the battery.

Irritable, Tony snapped back, “Why should I? Even if I build them a Jericho, they won’t let me go.” He was tempted to give the wires a particularly nasty yank, but if it meant going through the surgery a second time, he’d pass on that. He clenched his hands in the closest material instead, which happened to be the blanket he had thrown off the cot in his initial panic; being a man of action, he wasn’t used to waiting around, but there were no other options. Not this time.

Yinsen’s unimpressed stare was nearly palpable. Tony swore he could feel it digging into his back in a way not even Pepper had managed, much like the one he hadn’t felt in years. “You will do no one any good if you kill yourself through ignorance or hastiness.” And wasn’t _that_ presumptuous?

But not wholly untrue, either.

“Come, let me show you.”

Reluctantly, Tony forced himself to stand and staggered over to the drafting table. Open books lay scattered over its surface, the black ink blurry in the poor light. Or, he realized with a sickening lurch in his stomach, that it was dried blood that had long since soaked into the pages, probably from the poor bastard that used to own it. Maybe his own, even.

“You are not unlike them.” Yinsen’s voice broke through the nausea and he turned, unsure whether to take insult for the comparison (he wasn’t a terrorist) or demand clarification. The doctor gestured to the bloodstained books, eyes sharp; he seemed not to require any input on Tony’s part, continuing, “That is your legacy. Their legacy. Here, a stain; there, death. Would you change that?”

It should have been an easy answer, but he couldn’t say it, not when they put together the arc reactor, not when they installed it ( _another surgery goddamnit_ ) and not when the armor had been forged or charged. Not until he held a dying man in his arms, not until he wore a suit of conviction and of hope and of final words, “Don’t waste it. Don’t waste your life,” as Yinsen’s dæmon whimpered once, the only sound he had heard her make the entire time they had been trapped together, and then the man took his final breath as the ermine dissolved into the earth.

 

The world _burned_.

 

Anne found him wandering the desert sands, the suit abandoned minutes (hours-days-months) before. She didn’t return to him immediately, but flew overhead, scouting the air for any sign of life, be it friend or foe. It was strange; he hadn’t noticed until he thought about it, but the pain of forced separation had faded. Like growing used to a missing tooth. The effects were still there – he still acutely felt the distance between them – but it no longer held the rawness it used to.

They didn’t speak of it. The less said of Afghanistan, the better.

Too soon, too late, the birds are flying overhead, blades chopping through the air. Anne came down as they landed, her talons gripping his shoulder with an intensity that didn’t feel real. It could have been the numbness, or belated shock from the torture or finally being free or _Yinsen_ or—

And Rhodey was there, “Next time you ride with me,” and it was unreal.

Reality had somehow become fiction, but Tony couldn’t be happier. Even if he felt like he was deluding himself.

 

He understood what it was like and explained it to them during the flight. Rhodey, being an airman, knew what it was like to have his dæmon separated from him. It was commonly but unofficially encouraged that anyone enlisting in the air force have either a dæmon that could fly or was small enough to be hidden in one’s sleeve or pocket. Though the fox that accompanied him was small, being less than two feet from nose to hindquarters, she still couldn’t fit in with him no matter how they tried to arrange themselves.

So they became separated. Not torn from each other like Tony had first suspected he and Anne had been, only stretched. Like a rubber band. While he flew in the skies, Katherine waited for him on the ground, the other men looking to her as a rough gauge on the mission’s progress.

When Tony saw her calmly lying beside Rhodes, his fingers thick in her ruddy fur, he wondered and planned.

 

She wasn't as fast as the suit, but the bond between them as dæmon and human could relay information faster than even JARVIS no matter how far they traveled from one another. She was his eyes in the sky, watching out for everything that would harm him.

Maybe she wasn't fast enough but she would damn well try.

 

He had it coming and it was completely out of context; this wasn’t Star Wars and Tony was no Luke Skywalker.

Obie, Obadiah, Stane was no Anakin, either, and wow, definitely not Darth Vader. Not Tony’s father, for sure, though he may have regarded the man as a close uncle, all work where Jarvis –  far more of a father than Howard had ever been – was play. Sort of. If ‘play’ was code for, ‘keep Tony from jumping off the roof again to test his prototype shock absorbers’. Fun times, of course, not to mention that they’d worked perfectly and he only walked away with a sprained ankle for his trouble.

Stane had been more along the lines of ‘Bring-Your-Kid-To-Work-Day’, looking more to business but still treating Tony like he was human, something that deserved to be noticed. Maybe not in the sense of something to be thrown away once Stane had what he wanted.

Fuck. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t had enough issues already, hell, his issues had issues by the time he’d stumbled out of Afghanistan. This here was just another one to throw in the pile.

So maybe he closed himself off a little more. _Maybe_ he made extra copies of the reactor and stored them in sealed safes throughout the house and workshop. No one but he and JARVIS were any the wiser, after all. And maybe Agent Agent, but he hadn't yet visited after the large-scale reactor had exploded, so there was the chance it had slipped by him.

 

"The truth is... I am Iron Man."

And the world burned.

 

Tony had been given a second chance to live. Yinsen had made certain of that.

The second time Tony had died, he was forty. It was not swift and sudden like the first, but long and drawn out and torturous and almost made him long for the end. The arc reactor, the very device that kept his shrapnel from slicing his heart to pieces, was poisoning him. A stroke of irony befitting a man such as him, Tony decided. All he did, all he ever had done was create weapons of death. Now his masterpiece, his _magnum opus_ would be his end. Almost poetic, even.

What hurt was that no one else seemed to notice, even though that meant they were successful in hiding it from everyone else. Anne was preening constantly, smoothing her feathers and pulling out any coming loose before they could fall. He wore clothes a size too large, kept himself covered so no one could notice the weight loss, and later, the streaks of poison marking themselves upon his skin.

Pepper didn’t see or, even worse, _ignored_ the signs and brought paperwork as usual. Felix cocked his head every time he caught sight of Anne or Tony but made no move to tell Pepper what he saw, content to lounge across her shoulders, body looped in loose rings around her neck. The same was true for Happy and Gilda, except she followed Anne around whenever they were on the move. And Rhodey, he only saw him _twice_ – he only learned about the poisoning in a moment of weakness. And then came back to take the Mk II.

Katherine hadn’t been with him either time.

Now he was going through his father’s things, searching for one last project, some notes, _anything_ at all that could point him in the right direction. Improvements on the reactor. A new permutation, stable and non-toxic. Something. Anything.

“—my greatest creation, is you,” the recording said in the background.

“Whoa, hang on, back that up,” Tony said; Anne obliged, replaying the strip. He watched his father practicing his lines for the Expo introduction, osprey dæmon respectfully perched out of the way of the camera’s focus; his younger self messing with the diorama and being chastised; Howard drinking, offering to strip in front of the filming crew. “You went a little far,” he said to Anne. She shrugged.

Several more failed shots, then Howard walked onto the screen without a jacket and his tie loosened. “Tony,” and there was the one he was looking for, “you’re too young to understand this right now so I thought that I would put it on film for you.” He raised one hand, looked off camera. “I built this for you. And someday you’ll realize that it represents a whole lot more than just people’s inventions.” The view moved off to pan over the diorama, focusing on several different features. “It represents my life’s work. This is the key to the future.”

Camera returning to Howard, he continued, “I’m limited by the technology of my time but one day you’ll figure this out. And when you do, you will change the world. What is and always will be my greatest creation, is you.” He attempted a smile at the camera, looking more haunted than reassuring, before giving way to amber, then white, as the film ended.

Tony digested the information in silence. Howard’s greatest creation. It almost seemed too good to be true. “No time for brooding,” Anne reminded him, not unkindly.

 

So: Hammer was a prick; Vanko had worked for said prick; one was in jail, the other was dead and all the Hammer Drones nothing but steaming piles of scrap metal. Senator Stern was an assclown, Fury thought he was unstable but useful enough to work with his name-confused agency. Nothing new, so far.

Until the Director came back to talk. Let it not be said that Tony wasn’t interested.

(Iron Man yes; Tony Stark no.)


End file.
